Morning Bible Study: Job 24:1-12

24:1 Why does the Almighty not reserve times for judgment?
Why do those who know him never see his days?
2 The wicked displace boundary markers.
They steal a flock and provide pasture for it.
3 They drive away the donkeys owned by the fatherless
and take the widow’s ox as collateral.
4 They push the needy off the road;
the poor of the land are forced into hiding.
5 Like wild donkeys in the wilderness,
the poor go out to their task of foraging for food;
the desert provides nourishment for their children.
6 They gather their fodder in the field
and glean the vineyards of the wicked.
7 Without clothing, they spend the night naked,
having no covering against the cold.
8 Drenched by mountain rains,
they huddle against the rocks, shelterless.
9 The fatherless infant is snatched from the breast;
the nursing child of the poor is seized as collateral.
10 Without clothing, they wander about naked.
They carry sheaves but go hungry.
11 They crush olives in their presses;
they tread the winepresses, but go thirsty.
12 From the city, men groan;
the mortally wounded cry for help,
yet God pays no attention to this crime.

Commentary
(the following is from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com)

"Job discourses further about the prosperity of the wicked, that many live at ease who are ungodly and profane. Here he shows that many who live in open defiance of all the laws of justice, succeed in wicked practices; and we do not see them reckoned with in this world. He notices those that do wrong under pretense of law and authority; and robbers, those that do wrong by force. Job says, "God does not lay folly to them;" that is, he does not at once send his judgments, nor make them examples, and so manifest their folly to all the world. But he that gets riches, and not by right, at his end shall be a fool, Jeremiah 17:11."

Jeremiah 17:11

He who makes a fortune unjustly
is like a partridge that hatches eggs it didn’t lay.
In the middle of his life
his riches will abandon him,
so in the end he will be a fool.

Morning Bible Study: Job 23:13-17

13 But he is unchangeable; who can oppose him?
He does what he desires.
14 He will certainly accomplish what he has decreed for me,
and he has many more things like these in mind.
15 Therefore I am terrified in his presence;
when I consider this, I am afraid of him.
16 God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me.
17 Yet I am not destroyed by the darkness,
by the thick darkness that covers my face.

Commentary
(the following is from Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary, 1706 -- www.christianity.com) 

"As Job does not once question but that his trials are from the hand of God, and that there is no such thing as chance, how does he account for them? The principle on which he views them is, that the hope and reward of the faithful servants of God are only laid up in another life; and he maintains that it is plain to all, that the wicked are not treated according to their deserts in this life, but often directly the reverse. 

But though the obtaining of mercy, the first-fruits of the Spirit of grace, pledges a God, who will certainly finish the work which he has began; yet the afflicted believer is not to conclude that all prayer and entreaty will be in vain, and that he should sink into despair, and faint when he is reproved of Him. He cannot tell but the intention of God in afflicting him may be to produce penitence and prayer in his heart. 

May we learn to obey and trust the Lord, even in tribulation; to live or die as he pleases: we know not for what good ends our lives may be shortened or prolonged."